"A Kinkade painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels," wrote Joan Didion...

... about the now-dead Thomas Kinkade.

"It typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on fire."

You've got to give the guy credit for the sheer performance of painting in a manner that is simultaneously so loveable — by those who love it — and so hateable — by those who hate it. I've so often heard the phrase: You either love it or you hate it. I don't like clichés, but in Kinkade's case, the phrase is so apt. And Kinkade was cliché. So I just want to say (in tribute to the cliché that was Kinkade): You either love it or you hate it. What else can be said? Oh, how about a poll:

Kinkade?
	Love it.
	Hate it.
	Hey, what about me? I'm actually in the middle, and I'm not lying.
pollcode.com free polls

And one more thing. I thought there was a death triad forming. Yesterday, I blogged about Jim Marshall — who designed the iconic rock-and-roll amplifiers. And just a couple days ago, we lost Ferdinand A. Porsche, who designed the great sports car, the Porsche 911. Kinkade fits that triad. These were all individuals who came up with a design that gave real pleasure to a lot of people. Others sneered, perhaps, for one reason or another, but enough of that. Goodbye to 3 popular designers.

"Tonette taped American #Idol. We are watching it now. I like the 80s music!"

A tweet from Gov. Walker. I'm reading his Twitter thread, looking for some links to material explaining/justifying all that legislation he just signed. In particular, I'd like to know more about the repeal of the 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act, which I referred to a couple posts ago.

In the comments there, I was asked to analyze the new law, and I looked around a bit and only found criticism of the change. HuffPo is writing about it. Walker's recall challengers — Kathleen Falk and Tom Barrett — are lambasting him predictably. Eventually, I found something, but not before I got sucked into Walker's fascinatingly banal Twitter feed (which I once compared to "Jim's Journal").

Also in the recent Walker Twitter feed:

Up early for a haircut then out enjoying the beautiful sunshine! What a beautiful day the Lord hath made....

Sadly this is not a good Fri for the #Brewers....

Spent am signing bills in Milwaukee office then off for Good Friday and later for #Brewers Opening Day @ #MillerPark....

I drink several bottles of #cranberry juice each day. Glad our output is up 11% according to USDA...

This is charming... unless you hate the guy, as many do. In which case, I assume you're jeering or beating your head against the wall. He needs to explain these new laws persuasively. His opponents get so far out in front of him. He reminds me of George W. Bush, who seemed to believe that decent people would give him credit for doing the things he believed were right. Meanwhile, his antagonists controlled the narrative.

Rich Lowry is keeping it short.

"Needless to say, no one at National Review shares Derb’s appalling view of what parents supposedly should tell their kids about blacks in this instantly notorious piece here."

That's the whole item. Should he have said more?

For links to more commentary on the abysmally bad John Derbyshire piece, go here.

IN THE COMMENTS: Patrick said:

He should have added another line, informing NRO readers that Derbyshire is no longer an NR contributor.

Remember when National Review fired Ann Coulter?

UPDATE: Rich Lowry announces that NR has fired Derbyshire. After some nice compliments — "he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer" — and some half-compliments — he's "maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative" — Lowry calls the new piece "nasty and indefensible." NR would never have published it, yet the name, National Review, is getting used to inflate its prominence. "Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise." Lowry calls the article "so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation." Perhaps it is what Derbyshire wanted, and now he's got a powerful send-off.

"I'd like to finish the week without Scott's dick in my ear, but until captain douche-nozzle is recalled..."

"I'll drink and stew and become more resolute in my hate directed at this prick."

A sample of the discourse over in the Isthmus forum, where Madisonians bemoan the newly signed Wisconsin law that repealed the 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act.

MEANWHILE: In the comments section of last night's post "The Democrats' War on Women," a couple commenters engage in sexist wordplay about Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (who, like Walker, faces recall). A commenter referred to "Walker and his 'minions'" and chickenlittle quipped "What about all the filly minions like Kleefisch? Do you want to filet them too?" and leslyn said "How do you filet a filly??" This portrayal of a woman as meat called to mind the infamous Hustler magazine cover (showing a woman's body fed through a meat grinder). I said:

"How do you filet a filly??"

Said, about Rebecca Kleefisch, by a female commenter who probably regards herself as a feminist. That image is one of sexual violence.

You compare an adult woman to a juvenile animal. You refer to slicing into her dead (animal) body, prepping her for cooking.

But the woman you revile is conservative, so maybe you didn't notice.

If you think you are a feminist, you are a fake one, really a lefty or a Democrat, and your partisan politics comes first.

Go stand over there will Bill Clinton.

Leslyn defended herself this way:

Oh for goodness sake, Althouse, "how do you filet a filly" was A PLAY ON WORDS on CHICKENLITTLE'S comment. Which you'd have recognized were you not humorless.

And get off the "feminist" rant already. To use a METAPHOR, you jump both sides of the fence.

My response:

I saw the joke. That is was a joke is irrelevant to my point.

Would you like me to Google "sexist jokes" for you?

Try making racist jokes out in public and see how far "it was humor" gets you.

Picture a filleted young horse. Picture a woman in a similar condition. Picture a particular named woman in that condition.

Now, is that funny?

Remember when Rush Limbaugh portrayed Sandra Fluke as a prostitute and said we should have sex tapes of her on the internet?

How funny was that?

Now... go on with your explanations about why you are really not a hypocrite.

Alternatively, concede. It might be the better option.

Being a feminist is hard. You have to be consistent. Take the challenge.

Gov. Walker's new abortion laws.

AP reports:

Gov. Scott Walker quietly signed a set of contentious GOP bills barring abortion coverage through health insurance exchanges, requiring doctors to consult privately with women seeking abortions and mandating sex education teachers stress abstinence.

Quietly? The point is he signed a lot of bills on Thursday and some more on Friday, then announced them all at once on Friday. A Friday bill dump. Presumably, he's more interested in avoiding criticism than getting credit. Of course, he's getting plenty of criticism from Democrats anyway, both for the substance of the laws and for the low-key signings. But let's concentrate on the substance:

[One] bill requires a woman seeking an abortion to undergo a physical exam and consult with a doctor alone, away from her friends and family. The doctor must determine whether someone is pressuring the woman into the procedure....

Republicans contend the bill will ensure women aren't coerced into abortions and prevent doctor-patient consultations via webcam.

But opponents argue webcam consultations aren't currently done in Wisconsin and Republicans simply want to make it more difficult to get an abortion....

That last sentence troubles me. How can you portray it as a burden — making it more difficult — if what is now forbidden was not even being done?

Do opponents also believe there is currently no problem of women getting pressured to have abortions? If that were happening, you wouldn't complain that abortions were more difficult to obtain. You'd want to slow things down at that point to protect the woman's right to choose. No mainstream political voices argue in favor or more abortions, only stronger abortion rights, freer access to abortion, if that is the woman's choice.

That last sentence needs rewriting, but it's hard to figure out how. It could say:

But opponents argue that women aren't coerced into abortions, and Republicans simply want to make it more difficult to get an abortion.

That would make sense as an argument, but I don't know if it's factually true. Opponents might feel squeamish about making an assertion like that, and it may conflict with other things they'd like to be able to say about the subordination of women. 

Abortion politics. I'm not defending either side here. Everyone's gesturing at political constituencies. It's a nasty business in a delicate place, where there are many conflicting values, and a tremendous amount of dishonesty all around.

"10 Communication Secrets of Great Leaders."

Excerpt:

4. Focus on the leave-behinds not the take-aways: The best communicators are not only skilled at learning and gathering information while communicating, they are also adept at transferring ideas, aligning expectations, inspiring action, and spreading their vision. The key is to approach each interaction with a servant’s heart. When you truly focus on contributing more than receiving you will have accomplished the goal. Even though this may seem counter-intuitive, by intensely focusing on the other party’s wants, needs & desires, you’ll learn far more than you ever would by focusing on your agenda.

"This grasping at straws was just the capstone to what even liberal observers admitted was a week of self-immolation..."

I'm annoyed that I can't get into that article — about the SG's argument in the Obamacare case — because I don't have a subscription to the Weekly Standard. Now, I'll never know whether that article contains a funnier mixed metaphor than that.

What are those images?

Self-immolation is deliberately setting oneself on fire. I picture dramatic protests from the Vietnam era, but it's been going on for centuries:

It was Western media coverage of Buddhist monks immolating themselves in protest of the South Vietnamese regime in 1963 that introduced the word "self-immolation" to a wide English-speaking audience and gave it a strong association with fire. The alternative name bonzo comes from the same era, because the Buddhist monks who immolated themselves were often referred to by the term bonze in English literature prior to the mid-20th century...

Bonzo! Most Americans think of that Ronald Reagan movie when we hear "Bonzo." Perhaps some think of Led Zeppelin. But fiery suicide, to make a political point? That's new to me.

A capstone is "a stone that caps or crowns." I'm quoting the OED, where we can see the metaphorical use of the word goes back to 1685: "Here is the fair occasion... to put the cap-stone upon his other perfections" (tr. B. Gracián y Morales Courtiers Oracle 150). By the way, the Great Pyramid is missing its capstone. Ever notice? Makes you want to put an eye there:



Okay, now what about grasping at straws? What's the image there? I realize I've always pictured ants trying to get out of water by climbing onto some bit of straw. Focusing on that for the first time, I can see that grasping at straws would probably work for an ant. You're supposed to picture a human being trying to escape drowning and desperately grasping at anything, no matter how absurdly useless it is. Wiktionary tells me that the image goes back Thomas More, "Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation" (1534). More is talking about people who will not seek the "comfort" of God. Some of them are completely lethargic — "so drowned in sorrow that they fall into a careless deadly dullness." Others are so "testy" and "fuming" that you don't even want to talk to them. Then there are people who do want to be comforted. Some of them "seek for worldly comfort":

He who in tribulation turneth himself unto worldly vanities, to get help and comfort from them, fareth like a man who in peril of drowning catcheth whatsoever cometh next to hand, and that holdeth he fast, be it never so simple a stick. But then that helpeth him not, for he draweth that stick down under the water with him, and there they lie both drowned together. So surely, if we accustom ourselves to put our trust of comfort in the delight of these childish worldly things, God shall for that foul fault suffer our tribulation to grow so great that all the pleasures of this world shall never bear us up, but all our childish pleasure shall drown with us in the depth of tribulation.

You know, that eye on the pyramid, as seen on the Great Seal of the United States dollar bill is the "Eye of Providence":

On the seal, the Eye is surrounded by the words Annuit Cœptis, meaning "He approves (or has approved) [our] undertakings", and Novus Ordo Seclorum, meaning "New Order of the Ages". The Eye is positioned above an unfinished pyramid with thirteen steps, representing the original thirteen states and the future growth of the country. The lowest level of the pyramid shows the year 1776 in Roman numerals. The combined implication is that the Eye, or God, favors the prosperity of the United States.

Have we gone so deeply into the mixed metaphor that it's all coming together somehow?

"77% Believe Jesus Rose From the Dead."

Is that likely voters? What's the margin of error? Rasmussen has a poll.

Seventy-eight percent (78%) think Jesus was the son of God. Sixteen percent (16%) don't believe that's true.

Seventy-seven percent (77%) believe Jesus rose from the dead, while 16% reject the central Christian tenet of the Resurrection.

What's with the 1% who think Jesus was the son of God but did not rise from the dead?

It's a survey of 1,000 adults and the margin of error is is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Does your religion have less than a 3 percentage point margin of error and more than a 95% level of confidence? Should one defer to the choice of the overwhelming majority of your fellow citizens? Isn't it funny that, historically, that's what most human beings have done?

Predictably, Evangelical Christians, other Protestants and Catholics believe strongly in Christ’s divinity. Most non-Christian Americans believe Jesus did exist, but they are more evenly divided on whether he was the son of God and rose from the dead.

What?! Non-Christians are evenly divided on whether he was the son of God and rose from the dead?! Who are these people who believe Jesus was the son of God and rose from the dead but don't call themselves Christians? I'd like to ask them a few more questions. Are these people who think that you shouldn't call yourself a Christian if you are not doing a good enough job of following the teachings of Jesus Christ?

Most Americans of all racial backgrounds believe in the divinity of Christ, but black adults share this belief even more than white adults and adults of other races.

For all our talk about race, we don't talk that much about the role of religious beliefs. I'd love to see the percentages on that, but the linked article doesn't say, and though I have a Rasmussen subscription, I'd need a Platinum subscription to get to that level of detail.

Do you think you need to believe in Jesus to go to Heaven when you die? Rasmussen didn't ask that question. Maybe believing in Jesus is like having a Platinum subscription.

Just kidding.

Happy Easter to everybody, everywhere.

"So to believe in magic — as, on some deep level, we all do — does not make you stupid, ignorant or crazy."

"It makes you human."

"Women are not some monolithic voting bloc, women are not an interest group, you shouldn’t be treated that way."

Says Obama. I agree. But... has the Democratic Party been acting like it believes that? Just before that he said: "There’s been a lot of talk about women and women’s issues lately, as there should be, but I think the conversation has been oversimplified."

So... will you call bullshit on the "War on Women"? Or will you alternate between fighting the war and saying there is no war?

Clarence Thomas "said he went to a Cracker Barrel restaurant with three non-lawyer buddies for his 60th birthday."

From an article about Justice Thomas's talk at the University of Kentucky.

The justice also had good words for the community in which he grew up. He compared the rural Georgia area to the setting of the movie The Help.

Despite all of the troubles, he wouldn't trade the neighborhood for anything, he said, adding that there was order and peace there.

"I was treated a lot better in the South than I was ever treated in the North," he said. In his high school, where he was the first, or one of the first, black students, "nobody ever said I was inferior."

Thomas described the Supreme Court as a "wonderful place" that "might be better than we deserve." He said the other justices are "good people" and his friends; he's never heard an unkind word among the nine justices when they discuss legal cases.

At the Friday Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"But none of this crying was from actually being sad; I just felt too connected to the lives of others..."

"... to the vulnerability I could hear in someone's voice or hanging plainly on his face," writes Catherine Lacey, who, to become an egg donor, had taken injections of Lupron (which "greatly reduces the sex hormones estradiol and testosterone") and Menopur ("made from the urine of post-menopausal women") and Gonal-F, ("a mega-follicle-stimulating-hormone that is bovine-derived").

If I made eye contact with anyone I immediately wanted to mourn and rejoice them. Subways were impossible. Strangers were emotional landmines. I was the menopausal, pregnant, and postpartum mother of the world.

I realize now that it sounds dramatic. It was dramatic, even to me: I'm not the weepiest woman who ever was. I'm known mostly for well-intentioned sarcasm, level-headedness, and an ability/susceptibility for detaching. So I found the over-emotional side-effect strangely enjoyable, like I was renting some more emotional woman's brain.

It's quite disturbing to think that these stereotypically female qualities are so chemical, that they could be injected, but then perhaps I wouldn't find it so disturbing if I were not myself female.

ADDED: A reader emails:

I used IVF to get pregnant. I took Lupron, Menopur, and Follistim (which is similar to Gonal-F). I didn't have any emotional symptoms at all. The only thing that happened was mild bloating and weight gain. Lacey's experience is totally foreign to me.

The Democrats' War on Women in Wisconsin.

I know Wisconsin is so last Tuesday for a lot of you, but seriously, the effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker is a lot more significant than the next step in the Romney nomination process, so please don't stop thinking about Wisconsin. The recall primary is one month away and suddenly, Scott Walker is not the enemy, and there's a Democrat-on-Democrat fight between former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk — who declared her candidacy back in January — and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett — who just announced:

"You had your chance," [Madison attorney Linda Balisle] wrote Barrett Friday, just about 30 minutes after the Milwaukee mayor and 2010 gubernatorial candidate ended months of speculation by announcing he would run for governor. "We all gave you money. You lost. Now after Kathleen [Falk] has done all the work, a Chicago boss steps in and another Wisconsin woman is dissed."

Balisle, a longtime supporter who first met Falk when the two were students at UW Law School, says in a phone interview that she is disappointed that "after 35 years of [Falk's] boots-on-the-ground-work that has had a real effect on people's lives in Wisconsin, that [Barrett] would feel she's not good enough."

The "boss" she refers to is Chicago mayor and former Obama aide Rahm Emanuel, who recently attended a fundraiser for Barrett in Milwaukee.

Rahm Emanuel teams up with Barrett to push out the woman?! Remember the accusations about Rahm in relation to women working in the White House? (Ron Suskind's book "Confidence Men" said that "women occupied many of the West Wing’s senior positions, but felt outgunned and outmaneuvered by male colleagues such as former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and [Larry] Summers.")

Balisle says Falk has been traveling the state since the time of the Capitol protests against Walker's collective bargaining bill, even interviewing those gathering petitions to recall the governor. "All of this before she decided to run," says Balisle. "She didn't want to go on a fool's errand. She made sure she could do the numbers before she put friends and family through this."

Balisle also posted a "say it isn't so" message on Terese Berceau's Facebook page when she heard the Democratic state lawmaker from Madison might be backing Barrett...

Berceau confirms she is backing Barrett.... Berceau says Barrett has the best chance of appealing to independents.

"Independent women are the gold standard," she says. "We know we need to reach them and know they're critical...."

The woman knows we need the man to appeal to women....

And we need a Chicagoan to tell Wisconsin what to do. We heard it a year ago at the protests: "Chicago is up in the house!"

Only 15% of likely voters think the Supreme Court puts "too many limits on what the federal government can do."

Rasmussen reports.

30% think the Court doesn't put enough limits on the federal government. 40% thinks the Court gets it just right — which I presume is partly because people tend to trust the Court's authority on legal issues and partly because the Court is actually pretty good at providing just about the right degree of countermajoritarian balance.

That 40% — those who think the Court is getting it right — is about the same among Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated groups. But what about the rest of the Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated groups? Are they saying too much or not enough? Interestingly, the Republicans and unaffiliated voters are saying not enough.  The Democrats are divided into too much and not enough. All of that shows, I think that attacking the Court as "activist" isn't a very useful political move.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) of all voters trust the Supreme Court more than the other two major branches of the federal government – the presidency and Congress. Thirty percent (30%) trust the president more, while only 12% put more faith in the Congress. Nineteen percent (19%) are not sure. Those figures reflect only modest changes since May 2009.... 

Most Republicans (70%) and voters not affiliated with either of the major parties (54%) have a favorable regard for the high court. Democrats by a 50% to 42% margin do not.

But then 60% of Democrats trust the president more than the other two branches of the government. Fifty-five percent (55%) of GOP voters express more confidence in the Supreme Court, a view shared by just 19% of those in the president’s party. Among unaffiliateds, 40% trust the court more, while 27% have more confidence in the president.

Interesting how the "unaffiliateds" seem more in sync with Republicans than with Democrats.  This suggests it is not wise for Democrats to continue to denigrate the Court.

The Democrats' "jewbag" problem.

Have you noticed this controversy? It's the kind of thing that makes you want to say that if Republicans made a misstep like this we would never hear the end of it. It would be a "macaca" moment.

The staffer for DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz who posted the controversial 'Jewbag' photo on her Facebook page in 2006 is no anonymous aide -- but the daughter of Mark and Nancy Gilbert, two major Florida donors who have raised more than $500,000 for the Obama campaign.

Danielle "Dani" Gilbert, according to party sources, was tapped by Wasserman Schultz to serve as a liaison to the Jewish community, even though party officials and people close to Obama told her that more senior Democrats were already handling those responsibilities.

Wasserman Schultz has thus far refused to fire or discipline Gilbert, whose gallery of candid photos and personal commentary has since been removed from her public Facebook page, according to Democrats.

(Also on POLITICO: Wasserman Schultz says Mormonism off limits)...

Thanks, Politico. Thanks for inserting Wasserman Schultz's banal pronouncement about that other religion. I guess there's some relevance. Let's read that:

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz fired back Wednesday at Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch’s claim that Democrats would attack Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith in the fall election, saying the charge was “nonsense” and that the issue of religion was off-limits....

“That suggestion is utter nonsense. Let’s remember that President Obama has had so many things hurled at him – birth certificate questions, whether he is or is not a Christian,” Wasserman said. “For them to suggest that religion will be injected [into the election] by President Obama and the Democratic Party, I mean, I think they need to take a look inward at the accusations that their party and their supporters have hurled before they take that step.”

Well, I hope she's right about that, but of course, there will be many things the DNC won't control. It's hasn't been the RNC going after Obama over his religion, has it? And I seem to remember John McCain going out of his way to put Obama's religion far out of bounds, even declining to use the terribly juicy anti-American spoutings of Obama's pastor.

ADDED: What does "jewbag" mean? Urban Dictionary has definitions like "cheap; selfish person," "A greedy jew or a handful of greedy jews," and "someone who screws over another person on an extreme level." The "conservative web site" referred to in the Politico article is The Washington Free Beacon, which says:

The Democratic Party’s newly appointed Jewish outreach liaison is pictured on Facebook in a series of provocative photos with her friends holding dollar bills and referring to themselves as “Jewbags” and the “Jew cash money team.”

I'm inferring that the "-bag" part refers to moneybags, rather than — to point to other meanings of "bag" —  

1. an "unattractive or elderly woman," which, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, goes back to 1924 (P. Marks Plastic Age xviii. 202,   "I don't... chase around with filthy bags or flunk my courses"); or...   

2. "scrotum," which the OED locates back in the 1598 writing Frenche Chirurg: "The Scrotum, which we call the bagg wherin the testicles are contayned," which is the use of "-bag" in the present-day political slang term "teabagger," though I note that the 4th most-approved-of definition of "jewbag" at Urban Dictionary includes a second meaning "the action of tea-bagging a jew or someone of jewish descent."